Star Trek - I Mudd - visual effects comparison 

That's the thing - when I realize that this was done 50 years ago with a low budget, BEFORE Tron, BEFORE Star Wars, BEFORE 2001 A Space Odyssey, and the only thing I can say about the original effects is WOW.

I imagine cameras in the 60s had a very limited colour range which meant that shadows didn't contrast as well as they do with todays cameras, the problem with the CGI is that it solves one problem by causing another; the contrast is fine but the CGI model is too clean; it lacks the smaller details we subconsciously pay attention to which would lead to better photorealism (scratch marks, stains, groove marks, etc ). A better solution for the remaster would've been to repeat what they did in the 60s, frame by frame, but with newer cameras.

What was the point to cgi it at all? I noticed it yesterday while watching season 2 on Hulu. I never watched tos until recently. The more I watched the more I realized how crap the cgi look. The more I realized it was cgi.

I think we've lost a bit. Especially since the new effects struggle big time with the perspective of enterprise. E.g. in its first appearance in the title sequence it appears to be on an elliptical trajectory instead of in a straight-line flyby. I feel the new effects, albeit with better lighting effects and cute 3d look into the quarters from the window ideas, are cheaper than the originals... With the originals we could actually appreciate the artwork achieved at the time, now we all feel like the remake of the effects is below piar.

Indeed

exactly...

I totally agree with you why can't they just leave things be as they have already killed star wars of with new so called sound and CGI so I had luck when they put the almost original versions on DVD back in the early 2000's

The blu-rays contain both the original and the modified version. The show was shot on physical film and that has been preserved as well. I see no issues in this operation.

If more original uncomposited VFX film elements had survived, it could have been handled more like TNG, with the original model footage over new backgrounds. Then they could have replaced a lot of reused stock footage while keeping the original look.

That plus by going cgi , the cut out some of the morals of the story.

They did, you can still find the original episodes on the blu-rays

Tell that to George Lucas

*this*

Whatever. The new effects are just fine.

yup- the problem of combining 2 eras of special efx- the result is a "jarring" visual experience....they didn't do this to, "Star Trek: The Next Generation" for the Blu-Ray releases- you just get better color and details (ie: you can see a lot more detail on the Enterprise studio model, for example...)...wish they had left the original series alone...

Totally agree rodney

That depends on how they're used; CGI tends to date badly when it is used as an unnecessary substitute for something that can be done practically, personally I think they should've used the same traditional methods for the space sequences but with modern HD cameras instead of the film ones that were originally used in the 60s. In fact I think The Next Generation hit the nail perfectly on the head by having the planets be CGI whilst the ship was a model. As for how CGI can be used well, Jurassic Park is still a legendary example of CGI being used seamlessly with practical effects, and from what I've seen it's the lighting that makes the most difference (low light shots with CGI always tend to look better because the audience isn't as subconsciously drawn to the smaller details as they would be under normal lighting), or the shot of the black hole in Interstellar. There's also the hidden CGI effects used for hiding strings or for hiding something that's part of a practical effect (like the piston that launched the lorry in The Dark Knight Rises). short version: the timelessness of CGI effects will always be defined by how they're used, and even a practical effect can age badly if it's built to a certain standard (personally I felt some of the backdrops in the original series of Star Trek could've been a bit more better designed, but then again the flaws in the backdrops probably weren't as glaring on the traditional TVs that were used in the 60s).

as opposed to a 1960s transistor radio.

Why can't they just appreciate it for what it was ?!?

I agree completely.

yes the new cgi lost all the charme! I cant stand watching TOS on netfrlix due to the crappy CGI... gonna buy a box set now where I can have the original Enterprise which looked just a million times better !

Ok boomer

@@jamyourjam1692 Silence. I'm in my early twenties and would still have preferred the original effects.

Yeah the shot of the Roboter stomach in I,Mud - why would you use CGI there? It looks actually worse…

@@bingobongo1615 right. if i didnt now it was changed i would be freaked out.

I agree. That's part of why TOS can be appreciated. Not just the excellent stories, and good character building, but surprisingly convincing special effects. Ofcourse their are also bloopers and camp but that actually also adds to the charm. I honestly think the old shots of the enterprise model have more atmosphere and look more real than the CGI versions. The only improvement is the engine nacellles glowing in some scenes of the original where it was omitted. Also, the planets look uniformly better in the CGI.

The comparison between the two is that they're campy and not meant to be taken as seriously as the fans eventually took them.

That's really the problem, it lacks film grain and lighting. It's not a very good CGI reconstruction but better than nothing. TNG VFX looked top tier tho.

It's sooo weord

It is also odd that the update some stuff but in other scenes they go with the old effects. It is so random what they change and what they kept.

My first thought was, they look like a Winamp skin

They do seem to fit Spock's dialog a little better though. "And most sophisticated." With all those circuit boards and wires and lights that all blink together. That line kinda comes off as an unintentional punchline in the old version.

@@Pyro-Moloch if that shot ruined the show, it was only for the two dozen people who know what Winamp is.

@@BarryPiper for people who know winamp, it couldn't ruin the show

+Joe Libby I'm not sure if it's a different take or if they simply did some "digital manipulation" on the end of the shot but they obviously changed it because of the transition to the new CGI shot

+TrekkieChannel You might be right. But I'll say this: if they did digitally manipulate the shot, it was masterfully done, but it doesn't add anything. Fortunately, it doesn't detract.

Oh yes, they definitely did a great job with it.

It's been slowed down after the line of dialogue to make room for the dissolve to the next FX shot.

same take but re-composited to steady end of shot.

While the ship is very acceptable in both, I'm not sure it can be denied that the enterprise fits into the universe backdrop dramatically more in the CGI version with the lighting and shadows; the original is lit up too much a lot of the time, and it is a bit hard to immerse yourself when it's clearly got strings attached when it rotates direction. The worst of the CGI has to be the robot insides, honestly laughable.

I find this remaster extremely rude to the original model makers and artists. Horrible.

@@reddaB I like the remaster.

The remastered CGI for classic Trek was done in 2006 for the 40th anniversary. So that makes it nearly 14 years old now. I own all three season of remastered but I like the originals a heck of alot better.

Bots Gone Wild.

I agree with you 100%

It's to try and bring it to a newer generation of viewers.. a good amount of the CGI works fine, that stomach CGI was pretty bad though.

Yep. They claim younger viewers don't like the old effects, saying it takes them out of the story. It's far more jarring and distracting for me to see the CGI effects.

i think you have missed the point.. they did not want to over do it and make it look put of place ;)

@Writer B.L. Alley Which is a dumb excuse. What you're basically saying is their rationale is "The old effects looked imperfect, so we replaced them with new effects that look imperfect." I say leave them be just the way they aired, warts and all. Otherwise, where should the meddling stop? Maybe they could recut some of the dialog to take out the inconsistencies and plot holes. When something is a product of its time, take it or leave it as it is.

soo true can not watch it with this CGI soo bad looses all the charm the originals lighting is sooo good!

@@pilsatortube Beautiful thing is we the viewer have a choice. Get the original or remastered. I like both. They did the Enterprise good. She looks beautiful.

@@hamhockbeans she look slike in a video game from the early 90s at best while the original looks absolutely stunning! To bad on Netflix you have no choice! Gota get me the box where you have the option!

Look how BEAUTIFUL the ORIGINAL Enterprise looks!!! Goosebumps allover.

That is subjectively not true. I love original stuff, but some things are definitely improved I thought. As a child in the very early 90's watching random episodes my parents put on, the enterprise always looked like it was on strings. Especially the intro where the ship abruptly changes angle/direction, whereas with the CGI ship it looks like it's travelling through space; the same for the ship being pulled left/right when turning. I watched the whole remastered TOS last year properly, not knowing there was a remastered version, and the only thing that really stood out and showed me "yep this is definitely remastered and I dislike this effect" was the android insides. The ship visually fits into the backdrop much more than the original - it always seemed too lit up with a spotlight - but the CGI ship (which I think looks superb considering most CGI is lazy) seems to fit far better. The differing planet effects could have been left alone, but for say...90% of it, the remaster is decent, in my opinion of course :)

The very best CGI of the last few years can be very had to discern from reality. For instance, all the backgrounds in the climactic NYC battle in the first Avengers movie were all CGI. But either they hired a second-rate shop to do the effects for this, or some people claim they "tried to make it look 1960s-era." You know what would look like the 1960s? The actual 1960s effects!

@@amightysailingman the cgi for this was done in like 2006, thats why. while i do agree that modern cgi is way better, the future holds even better cgi, it will age like a carton of milk while the practical effects will age like a bottle of wine

@@nodre6111 You're mistaken. The apologists for the CGI claim they intentionally made them look worse than state of the art at the time in order to look like '60s effects. Motion pictures from the 1990s were still more convincing than this. Star Trek: Insurrection was released eight years before the "remastered" TOS.

...And thank you for doing the side by side comparisons!.

You're welcome :)

I totally agree and I'm an old fart who as a kid, grew up watching all the 60's shows. I think the updated CGI stuff is great and done very tastefully and just fixed up some of the things that looked corny at the time, like an android isn't going to have some wiring that looks like the inside of a 1950's television set with diodes and resistors and I don't find it 'endearing' or anything like that -- I just find it corny and hokey looking and I always get turned off seeing old shows that are supposed to be set in the future that show 1950's-60's mechanical and electrical components. One of the things they DID get right on the original were the flat viewing screens and the colored chip-things they use for recording info on that are like SD cards used in cameras etc. Thank God they had the foresight to realize that magnetic tape wouldn't be around in the future! All in all I am impressed.

The shadow just made it fit more into the space backdrop. I always used to think "Where is all this light coming from that the ship is lit up like that?"

You still can - on Blu-ray (or DVD)

Yes, the ship is my main problem with the new effects - the space effects, anomalies, stars etc. look pretty good but the ships look a bit fake

Yeah, me too. I prefer the physical Enterprise model, but the CGI planets. It would be great if they would release some "hybrid" edition

@@TrekkieChannel I was thinking about picking up a physical copy of the Blu Ray but didn't know which version I liked better. Still deciding

@@Ironcaster Both versions of all episodes are on the full season Blu-ray sets

I don't know why they made the enterprise model so strange. the light is so bad

CBS has done them for the 40th anniversary in 2006(-2009). The Blu-ray sets feature both versions of each episode, unfortunately most streaming services seam to have only the new versions

NinJaRed FOR SHAME !!! Amen.

Tuttigiu NAILED IT. that's exactly what I said. Looks like PlayStation 1

Eh, I wish PS1 graphics could be like this.

That's why I'm glad that at least on the Blu-ray sets we can chose which version do we want to watch.

Exactly.

For some reason everything now has to be dark. Even if it makes no sense.

It's more realistic. The ship did not self-illuminate as it did during the movie era.

Agree. People who take this remaster as an opportunity to diss CGI are just completely beside the point. Voyager had better CGI than this in the 90s. I'm not sure if it was their intention to make these remaster CGI effects more "scale model" looking (and they fail spectacularly even at that), but it completely defeats the purpose in my view. And the transition between grainy 60's camera and weirdly clean and flat 1998-videogame-style ship renders is just jarring. Either they should have gone for state of the art realistic CGI (the Abrams "restart" came out the same year and its effects stand up to this day!) or they should have kept the integrity of the original and just scan it in better quality and touch up defects. If I'm watching an iconic piece of TV history, why shoud my experience be "improved" with CGI that was lame even at the time it was produced. I always disliked the remaster CGI in Star Wars too, although that at least had decent quality. If I'm watching an old movie, I want to watch it as it was originally made. Anything more than rescanning, improved color grading and minor touchups is disrespectful to the creators.

@@Iguana93BATTLESTAR GALACTICA reboot had realistic effects in 2003. I was surprised at how terrible the CGI to STAR WARS was considering ILM did decent work on JURASSIC PARK in 1993. Notice they never gave the FALCON a radar dish when Luke calls it a piece of junk. Getting back to STAR TREK... they never even bothered to match the live scale shuttle to the CGI at all. Also they did other dumb things like having the crew beam down THEN cross a bridge in AMOK TIME.

I think one has to see the original models to feel the excitement that people would have felt seeing these models of ships from space.. the CGI can never have the same magic..

I'm sure creating digital effects takes a lot of hard work too, just of a different kind. They certainly pay people a lot to do it.

Agreed 100%. And after all, their names are the ones in the end credits. How is it honest to give them credit but remove everything they did on screen?

"Some spotty twat", said without a hint or irony considering your complaint. Some one putting just as much effort into it, but because he's not hitting shit with a hammer, you dismiss him (or her). Nice attitude.

@@hellboy1976 If you want manmonkee to see your comment, you'll have to learn how the reply buttons work. Hint: just clicking the first available one isn't the correct way.

@@amightysailingman Yeah well I did that, and his name didn't appear within my response so I didn't lose sleep over it.

Because the fans had already bought the entire series, so Paramount needed some new gimmick to make fans want to buy new DVDs.

Basically yes. You shoot the Enterprise model in front of a blue screen, then shoot the planet model in front of a blue screen, then shoot the star field, and then combine all of the elements in an optical printer.

And you have every right to your opinion no matter how wrong it is.

As much as I love practical effects, i find that most Looks pretty bad in the original startrek, i know it was because of the budget and technological limitations, but better effects were available even years before startrek came out.

They did NOT change any of the actors' expressions. Although you CAN try a simple Google search to find out why this was done, the answer was quite simple. CBS, which now owns television rights to Trek (Paramount still holds movie rights) wanted to update the series for the restoration, for a modern viewing audience without changing it TOO much. When I got the Blu-ray set, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the CGI work turned out. For the HD remastering restoration, they had the original negative footage of the actors, but unfortunately for the special effects shots all they had was final composite footage, which was in bad condition which did not lend itself well to an HD remastering and restoration. Unlike what was done with Star Trek: The Next Generation, where they had access to ALL the original effects elements (shots of miniatures, backgrounds and so forth, and were able to recombine the elements into what they finally looked like, for the original series it was not possible. Watch the Blu-ray and the original effects versions of the episodes...it's very unsettling and jarring to see the major shift in quality between the original effects shots and the restored footage of the actors. The only solution was to do CGI replacements for all the original effects shots, generally keeping them fairly similar to what the original shots were like.

Erudius first off it’s off pudding. Secondly of course you are wrong pfft.

@@MrGnastygnate A simple Google search shows that your English is as bad as your taste in special effects. Why waste the time to correct someone when it's so easy to find out that you're wrong? "Pudding." Come on, man. Let me ask you this. Did you notice that they even screwed up the timing of the title? It doesn't correspond to the whoosh of the ship anymore. How can an editor who cares AT ALL screw up something so simple and iconic?

For example on the Blu-ray sets

I remember seeing it as a kid and being absolutely captivated by the surrealism.